Excreta management devices are known as articles that are designed to be worn principally by incontinence sufferers and in particular by bedridden patients. Such excreta management devices are attached to the perianal area or urethral area of a wearer and are intended to entrap and immediately contain fecal material, urine and other bodily discharges.
A representative excreta management device is disclosed in, e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 3,577,989. It discloses a disposable elimination-trapping bag comprising a sack having an open-top portion and a thin annular oval-shaped flange secured to the sack around the open-top portion. The flange comprises a layer of adhesive material as a means of attaching the disposable bag to a wearer. The disposable bag is specifically designed for attachment to a wearer in the vicinity of the anus.
Such an excreta management device is adhesively attached to the wearer's skin around an excretory orifice, such as an anal orifice, a urethra orifice or the like during the use of the device. When the excreta management device is used for incontinence sufferers or bedridden patients who cannot control defecation, caregivers need to frequently remove the devise from the wearer's skin in order to give a treatment, such as an enema, insertion of a suppository or the like to facilitate regular defecation. However, frequent removal of the device from the wearer's skin may damage the wearer's skin since the device is firmly attached to the wearer's skin to prevent leakage of discharged excreta. Particularly, it may lead to a serious skin problem for wearers having sensitive skin.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open publication No. 124189/1995 published on May 16, 1995, discloses another excreta management device comprising a bag for containing discharged fecal material. The bag is provided with an opening, an adhesive part surrounding the opening and a release paper covering the adhesive part. The device further has a discharge part to discard the fecal material stored in the bag. The user discards the fecal material by tearing the discharge part open along the perforations or by opening the zipper. However, in the case of perforations, once the user tears the discharge part open along the perforations, it is impossible to close the discharge part again. In the case of a zipper, the seal means of the zipper is not generally strong enough to prevent the zipper from opening by pressure exerted by movement of the wearer. Therefore, the discharge part must be pressed by the wearer's body (e.g., buttocks) during the use of the device such that the zipper of the discharge part does not open.
Accordingly, there still exists a need for an excreta management device which allows caregivers to easily make treatment, such as an enema, insertion of a suppository without removing the device from the wearer's skin. Additionally, there also exists a need for an excreta management device having an orifice for such a treatment, and a seal means to resealably close the orifice while the device is worn so as to prevent leakage of discharged excreta through the orifice by pressure exerted by movement of the wearer (or the discharged excreta itself).